1983
by antra
Summary: Somebody comes back and watches Hyde's life from the outside.


**1983  
**_Somebody comes back and watches Hyde's life from the outside.  
Nothing belongs to me. You saw Season 8? I would never have done something like that!_

She didn't know what she had expected.  
She wasn't even sure why she was back.  
Point Place, home to her for many years. Home or prison, it was a matter of perspective.  
And there she saw her former jailer.  
Steven.  
The child she never wanted.  
The child that ruined her life.  
In retrospect she knew she hadn't exactly been a good mother. She had been on every drug she could find, washed down with anonymous sex and lots of drinking.  
They had always alcohol in the house but something to eat was something she regularly forgot, not being hungry herself. So, she hit him when he did something wrong. Fastest way to teach the boy something. Like breathing too loud when she was hung over.  
And yes, there were days when she told him to stay out because she needed the house for herself and her 'friends', or left town for a few days.  
She knew from Bud that Steven had lived with the Foreman's when they met again, so he just found himself another family.  


* * *

She found him faster than expected and just by luck.  
She had looked into the record store because it was new, hadn't existed when she lived here.  
She was surprised to find Steven there. Or perhaps not, he had always loved music.  
He looked good, relaxed. He hadn't changed much from his 16 year old self: the hair darker and shorter, his whole build a bit wider and more muscled but that was it.  
She was distracted by something on the counter next to the cash register, something she couldn't recognize in the most ridiculous vibrant pink she had ever seen.  
What was that?  
She saw him working and then a tiny young woman came from somewhere in the store to him to give him a kiss. Edna was pretty sure she had seen the girl before but didn't know where.  
Steven reciprocated and sat her on the counter, leveling their heights.  
More kissing and over the clothes petting, then the woman said something inaudible to him, grabbed her bag and books.  
The few words on the title Edna could read from the distance indicated a book for college.  
Steven grabbed something out of that pink thing… and held a little baby girl in his arms.  
Steven had a child?  
The baby had a mop of dark brown curly hair and wore a tiny Led Zeppelin shirt.  
The young woman kissed the child, then Steven again and went off, seemingly to go to college.  
She automatically went a bit back, didn't want to be seen when she didn't know how to speak to Steven, or if she even wanted to speak with him.  
When the girl passed she surprisingly recognized her: The Burghard girl, Edna remembered that she had been the girlfriend of one of Stevens friends – the stupid one.  
While she had never been interested in his friends it had been a bit different where the Kelso boy was concerned. Steven normally went to his friends and they didn't come to their house but the few times they were there she had been afraid that Kelso would burn their house down. When he was around she never let him out of her sight, always suspicious of every move he made. She remembered a bit more about him because of that.  
The Burghard girl wore an engagement ring and a wedding ring.  
Edna never really thought about the possibility of Steven marrying and having children.  
But here he was, working in a record store, a perfectly legal job, with a wife and a daughter and looking happy in a way she had never seen before.  
It was strange. On one hand she wanted to believe that Steven was responsible for everything bad that had happened to her, and hated the fact that he was happy or even just content. On the other hand there was the very small realistic part in her brain that nagged at her what a bad mother she had been and that leaving him had been the best she could have done for him. She didn't think he would have the same life he had now had she stayed. And she certainly didn't think it would be better.  
After a last look to her smirking son and her happily gurgling granddaughter she turned around and went away.  
She had her answer.


End file.
